Rubbish Society

Over the years society has become more affluent and the need for products has risen. However, this has led to people buying things which are not needed and then throwing it away. This has increased the amount of wastage. As consumer society is driven by the power of consumption and rubbish plays a major role in it. Consumption is defined by how and what people purchase, how they use them and how they are then disposed off.   As outlined in Susman, 2003, People began to see consumer things in a different way, not just as useful objects that they should own to reflect their social position but as expressions of a particular lifestyle that they might aspire to have. Consumption is not based on the working class or the middle class anymore because people no longer live in an industrial society.   As Zygmunt Bauman argues that consumption has new divisions that defines the consumer society. These divisions are the seduced and the repressed.   The seduced according to Bauman are people who buy material which are valued as status symbols by their friends or neighbours, and   live lifestyles inspired by that. The repressed are the people who cannot live like the seduced for some reason, for example because they don’t have money to buy non-essentials or perhaps cannot go to malls because of lack of transport or disability. However, Vivienne Brown (2009) The Open University, Making Social Lives Book, Chapter 3, pg 11,   shows   evidence from the ONS of rising affluence. It also shows how there is a global chain connected with large supermarkets such as Tesco which join hands in bringing in cheap goods to the UK market.   This leads to more access to materials and leads to mass consumption.

As a result of mass consumption, rubbish and waste has increased. Over the years the amount of household rubbish has risen. Rubbish not only refers to food, but also household rubbish that is thrown away. In a report The food we waste (WRAP, 2008a, 2008b) suggests that as much as one third of...